Fanpulse: How many games are needed to have a meaningful baseball season?

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Royals fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

We already know baseball will have a shortened season, the only question is how many games will even be played in 2020? Baseball is tentatively scheduled to begin in mid-May, with a plan to play all games in Arizona being discussed, but there are doubts that all the staff needed to conduct games can be protected adequately. With some states still set to peak in COVID-19 cases as late as May, it seems like late June or even July is more likely for a start date.

But at what point will baseball simply have to punt on a season? We put it to our Fanpulse readers, and 40 percent said at least 80 games are needed to have a meaningful season, with just under 40 percent saying at least 100 games are needed. 15 percent said at least 120 games were needed, and just 5 percent needed 140 games or more. Teams played a little over 100 games in the strike-shortened 1981 season.

Baseball has also proposed shortening the draft to as few as five rounds this year, since teams won’t be able to scout amateurs this spring. Among Fanpulse readers, 53 percent said that five rounds was too few rounds, 41 percent found a five-round draft to be acceptable, and 6 percent felt the draft needed to be canceled.

We also asked readers whether there should still be a spring training to allow players time to ramp back up when play resumes.

The All-Star Game is still tentatively scheduled to be played in Dodger Stadium on July 14. But with a shortened season, baseball may opt to nix the Midsummer Classic and use that time to hold regular season games.

There has also been talk about playing games well into October and November, with a post-season possibly having in climate-controlled or warm weather neutral site stadiums in December. However this would give players a very short off-season for the 2021 season, unless owners push that season back as well.

Remember, you can sign up to participate in the FanPulse surveys at this link! Surveys will go out each week and only take a few minutes to complete. Check back next week for more FanPulse results!